1998:
More than 800 pilots show up at a domicile meeting at the Botanic Garden in Memphis, as well as many pilots showing up in Subic and Anchorage to watch live video streaming of the event. Guest speaker Marty Levitt tells the story of coming to FedEx in the early 1970s and being told that FedEx will never be unionized. Levitt’s book Confessions of a Union Buster, and over 25 years of experience, are his résumé when he warns that FedEx will do whatever it takes to attempt to break the Union. He says that management’s main tool will be to divide and conquer and our main weapon to fight it should be UNITY!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

1989
After almost two years of talks, the Management/FAB Committee, tasked with designing an “A/B Reserve” system, presents their plan. Management agrees to test the A/B Reserve System on the B-727 engineers for one bid period. At the conclusion of the test, management states the plan will “cost more than the present reserve system and therefore is too expensive to justify implementation.” It will be 10 more years before the A/B Reserve System is implemented as part of the FedEx pilots’ first collectively bargained agreement on May 31, 1999.
Three members of the FAB, Capts. Don Engebretsen, Al Smith, and John Poag, resign and start an independent union movement in hope of giving FedEx pilots some control over the upcoming seniority list arbitration between the FedEx/Tiger pilot groups. They take this action when it becomes evident that management is reneging on the commitment they made to protect the interests of the “Purple” pilots in the proposed seniority integration. Without knowledge of the FAB and contrary to their stated intentions, management has constructed a merger list that will result in minimal training costs to the Company. It is important to note that the seniority arbitration wasa tripartite arbitration, in which FedEx was an equal party to both the FedEx and Tiger pilot groups. This created a clear conflict of interest for FedEx management. They chose the least costly course of action. However, if the FedEx pilots had their own union, then seniority integration would be a contractual issue between the two unions.
The “No” group is formed and a “yellow sheet” with the printed names of FedEx pilots pledging loyalty to Fred Smith is stuffed into crew mailboxes. A concurrent anti-union campaign by management hits the crew room. Mr. Smith asks the “Purple” pilots to “give us a year” to address the pilot issues that have stirred interest in unionizing.

1991
Desert Storm operation begins and crewmembers are activated to Reserve and NationalGuard units. FedEx is the only major carrier to terminate all benefits (medical, dental, insurance, etc.) for its activated personnel and their families. Benefits are reinstated only if participant pays monthly fees.

1992
In October, the court-ordered re-run election is held. Ballot consists of ALPA and an independent union, United States Pilot Association (USPA); 1,015 pilots vote for ALPA, 271 vote for UPSA, 106 pilots vote “No,” and 887 pilots do not return ballots and therefore are counted as votes opposed to any collective bargaining representative (“NO” votes). A clear majority of pilots vote “for” collective bargaining. ALPA receives a majority of the pro-representation votes and, in accordance with NMB voting regulations, is declared the collective bargaining agent for the FedEx pilots, with 56.4 percent of the pilots voting FOR collective bargaining (1,286 out of 2,279 pilots).
Management appeals the election results. The NMB denies the appeal and validates the representational election results.

Wall St. Earnings Expectations: The average analyst is estimating profit of $1.72 per share, a rise of 29.3% from the same quarter a year ago. Estimates range from net income of $1.54 per share to profit of $1.85 per share. Over the past three months, the consensus estimate has moved down from $1.74. Over the past month, the consensus estimate has moved down from $1.73. For the year, analysts are projecting net income of $4.90 per share, a rise of 30.3% from last year.

Past Earnings Performance: For the past three quarters, the company’s quarterly results have come in below analyst’s expectations. Last quarter, the company reported profit of 81 cents per share versus a mean estimate of net income of $1.31 per share.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

When he was still President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, now mayor-elect of Chicago, famously quipped: "Never allow a crisis to go to waste."

Republican governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, and other states have certainly taken that advice to heart. By emphasizing, and in some cases manipulating, the red ink flowing through so many state budgets, they have leveraged the crisis to strike a body blow at the public-sector unions that represent so many teachers, professors, social workers, and municipal employees. The collective-bargaining rights of the police and firefighters, often a privileged caste, are also being threatened in some states.

Unionists and Democrats denounce this as opportunism, and in Wisconsin they have made the case that there is hardly a fiscal crisis at all, that public-employee wages and pensions are not out of line with those in the private sector, and that collective bargaining works pretty well. Neither the Wisconsin Counties Association nor the League of Wisconsin Municipalities was consulted by Gov. Scott Walker when he drew up the anti-union legislation that he claims is necessary for the solvency of his state's counties, towns, and cities. Nor do officials of either group support the governor's initiative.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Tell Your Members of Congress to Cosponsor the Shareholder Protection Act
Newly emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporate CEOs will be spending unprecedented millions to influence elections in 2012.

If you or someone you know has a 401(k), a similar retirement account or other investments, the corporations funded by these investments could be part of the problem.

The Shareholder Protection Act proposed by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) would empower shareholders to vote on whether to allow corporate executives to spend corporate money on political campaigns. Shareholders — not the CEO and not the board of directors — are the real owners of any publicly traded corporation, and the decision should be theirs.

Don’t let your family’s nest egg be used to promote the corporate agenda. If a majority of shareholders tell a corporation to stay out of politics, then the corporation should do exactly that.

Anyone with a 401(k) invested in stocks or mutual funds — nearly half of all households today — has a stake in how the corporate money in those funds is spent. Passage of the Shareholder Protection Act would help the public hold corporations accountable for their political behavior.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Today, June 5, 2011,the top of scale increase will start. P and D drivers, dock workers will get a .55 cent per hour. Line Drivers will get a .02 cent per mile increase. That will be an 2.35% raise. As of the beginning of the year,the month of May's rate of in flation was 3.2%. Plus if you are a victim of what dispatch at our terminal has said, "if your at dispatches window at 7 hours from your start time, your done for the day and most likely going home!"
Without a Contract/ Collective Bargaining in place your S.O.L., "At Will" FedEx employee!